The thing about Lord of the Rings -- or, an unexpectedly hopeful ending note on rant post

[idiosyncreant]

This is a rant that has been coming on for a while, because I've been binging on Lord of the Rings movie stuff after long abstinence, because my brother sent the family the Lego game for Christmas, and you know how it is with that little taste of an old addiction...

Anyway. Viewing it in a sort of post-LotR-dominant world is a little bittersweet.

Here's the thing: fans have gotten so jaded about it.

Yes, everyone has a right to gripe about the things left out. Whether there were inferiorities.
(For goodness sake, *I've* discovered that I've outgrown this vision of Faramir, and Strider's so hot I'm reluctant to leave that part of the movie behind...)
But fandom loves too well to hate a thing because it became popular with the mainstream, having gone outside the original fans (which is rot, my mother was in high school when these books were having their first revival of popularity, these fanchildren can get over it)

And it's so rank of privilege, in a way.

This movie was my Star Wars. I grew up watching movies with the toolset to create fantasy worlds from it's pioneering, but Lord of the Rings was the kind of awestruck experience that I think the first generation of Star Wars viewers felt in the theatre. There was an art to it, a skill to the mastery of new and old techniques, used to a whole other level. Suddenly, even what you could do with writing had to level up accordingly.

It was a masterpiece. John Howe and Alan Lee helped create a thematic realization of their whole bodies of work in fandom. Weta Workshop pushed the envelope for skill and artistry in both digital and physical design. Whole ranks of artists labored, some of them just to put together masses of chainmail, for years, that would hang right and be structured correctly.

And so maybe Peter Jackson has jumped the Phantom Menace shark with the Hobbit. My teen brothers love it, because it's the sprawling epic fantasy they are looking for, though the reason I love the Hobbit best of all books is because of the quiet threads of British humor and Bilbo's delightfully domestic outlook on these events of great moment. The man is an artist, like anyone, and can you imagine living with that over your head, as probably the greatest achievement of your life or at least the most notable? Who wouldn't go into a bit of sequel madness?

(And let's not even try to figure out how much studio politics must have gone into this incarnation, as well. Jackson got to produce LotR without any forces of expectations of a knowing public, and very little oversight from powers that be. That has no doubt changed a LOT.)

And you know what? I am SO SICK of feeling defensive because I fell in love with this movie, and gave it a piece of my heart I am never getting back.

Lord of the Rings was amazing.

So maybe Orlando Bloom, not so much.

And ten years from now, there'll be a more artsy rendition in which all the characters are less archetypical and more artsy, and I won't like it as well, but I'll give it a fair chance. But it'll be because PJ made it possible.

And no doubt some coming-of-age filmmaker who imprinted on that masterpiece will be doing something spectacular with innovations we can't even imagine.

Comments

[farrandy.livejournal.com]

Wow! So many things to comment on here.

While I watch The Hobbit and see all the money it's making a part of me wants to scream, "Don't you people see the difference? Jackson & Co. took Lord of the Rings, caressed it lovingly and made a true work of art. They're just wallowing in The Hobbit.", I also understand the latter's appeal; it's a much simpler story. It's not surprising that it has such mass appeal. It still amazes me that a movie with as dense a story as LotR did as well as it did (I, I think, like most people, consider it one long movie). I forgive Jackson for everything that they left out (farewell, Tom Bombadil*) or changed by thanking them for all the things they got right (Legolas walking on top of the snow; actually showing Gandalf fighting the Balrog: that beautifully sequence of the the watchtowers going off across the mountains as Howard Shore's score soared over the top of it [Ah, that score! How many pieces of art have I done listening to it?]). LotR was clearly a labor of love (thanks for mentioning Howe and Lee, BTW). The Hobbit feels more like an excuse to sell merchandise.

Hmmm... I should admit here that I haven't seen the Desolation of Smaug. Yet. I have some friends (whose opinion I value) warned me off of it saying that all the acting is good and there are a lot of good parts but like the first, there's just way too much of it. I will see it when it comes out on video because, well, Martin Freeman (he does confused so well). Okay, and Cumberbatch as Smaug. I just wish they'd done The Hobbit as one good three hour movie--and then Jackson could go and do something else (I could easily give him ten sf or fantasy titles that would make beautiful movies).

Don't feel bad about defensive about something you love. I still defend Star Trek because it opened me up to science fiction, fantasy and well, reading in general (ironically, if it weren't for Star Trek, I likely never would have read LotR. My life would be completely different if I hadn't as a teenager, watched those reruns --over and over. And over and over. I now admit that a lot of those episodes were mediocre to really bad, but the doors that the idea behind the show opened in my head...

*Has it ever occurred to anyone else that Beorn and Bombadil were changelings that got switched and put in the wrong books? They both serve the same purpose; as a waystop for a weary group of travellers, but the werebear that is the enemy of the orcs could have been a dark character that would fit so well into LotR while the happy song singing Bombadil seems more suited to The Hobbit. Or maybe it's just the silly song that makes him so off-putting. He is after all, the only character upon whom the ring has no effect, and he does save the hobbits from the barrow-wights (the first really scary point in the book). One feels there is much backstory that is never told about him. If only he'd had more than one silly song to sing--over and over.

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

Hah, you are SO right about Bombadil and Beorn. Beorn would have made LotR, he would have fit in the casting... and I forget, consistently, that he's in the Hobbit, though that series of events is wild and weird and wonderful I remember it as a vignette on its own. I'll think "Oh wait, who was that bear changeling with the house in the wilderness and the bees. Did he have talking horses? What? OH THE HOBBIT."

Bombadil I encountered in a read-aloud as a pretty young person, so in a way I'm totally uncynical about him, but I'm pretty glad he's not in the movie, looking at it that way--how could he have been made not ridiculous? There's some poetry of Tolkien's featuring him more as a fae-king kind of character, or something and that's maybe effected my vision of him as well. And his wife, River's Daughter, is kind of the foreshadowing of Galadriel, which makes you wonder if Tolkien realized he hadn't accomplished what he wanted to with her...and yet, both of them are not elves, and will not leave Middle earth to go into the west. So in a way, they are like the more enduring aspects of the elves that won't ever leave.

This post is basically my manifesto to articulate to *myself* that I don't have to be defensive. And yes, the thing about The Hobbit, is everything is just borrowing on the work that went before in LotR. And that's okay. Sometimes you can enjoy having already broken the ground, and serve the audience that wants a sequel, not a new vision.

Whether that's good for Peter Jackson's soul is another matter entirely, and I will not be commenting on it. XD

Martin Freeman as Bilbo was perfect, even if thinking of it, after watching Ian Holm's version, is a bit mind-bending. I waited for the first to come out on DVD and didn't regret doing so...so I haven't seen Smaug either.

The one thing I am hoping for in the next couple of movies is to see more of the Lake town, and the totally underutilized hero from there. The one thing I think I will be disappointed in is the kingdom of the elves, which was a very different realization than what came in Lord of the Rings, and so how can they preserve that somewhat cold, fae-court feeling without reneging on what we know of elves from LotR?

As long as Bilbo gets credit for a lot of their escape and etc., I'll be content.